Billions of neurons in your brain can reshape themselves in response to what you do and learn. Help them along with these eight strategies to be sharper, make wiser decisions and stay focused.

By Jena Pincott

Wake Up in Wonderland

Any time you encounter "meaning threat"—that unsettling feeling you get when something makes no sense—your brain starts to work harder, says Travis Proulx, a researcher at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Test-takers were almost twice as accurate in analyzing data and learning patterns after Proulx and his colleague made them read bizarre, nonsensical stories by Kafka and David Lynch.